skkn Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN LƯƠNG THẾ VINH

Mã số:

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary

Người thực hiện: BÙI NGỌC XINH Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN

1 Họ và tên: BÙI NGỌC XINH

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh: 21/07/1969

8 Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO

- Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: Thạc sĩ

- Năm nhận bằng: 2007

III KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC

- Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 20 năm

- Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã có trong 5 năm gần đây:

1 How useful pre-reading activities are in teaching reading

2 Helping gifted students enrich their idiomatic expressions

3 The effectiveness of group work in teaching reading

4 Extensive reading combined with extensive reading tasks to improve students’ general knowledge , increase their engagement in class and enrich their vocabulary

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

Biên Hòa, ngày 03 tháng 5 năm 2012

PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Năm học: 2011-2012

Tên sáng kiến kinh nghiệm: Motivating students to practice listening skill

through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary

Họ và tên tác giả: BÙI NGỌC XINH; Chức vụ: Giáo viên

Đơn vị: trường THPT Chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

Lĩnh vực: (Đánh dấu X vào các ô tương ứng, ghi rõ tên bộ môn hoặc lĩnh vực

khác)

- Quản lý giáo dục  - Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: 

- Phương pháp giáo dục  - Lĩnh vực khác:  Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã được triển khai áp dụng: Tại đơn vị  Trong Ngành 

1 Tính mới (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 2 ô dưới đây)

- Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới 

- Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ giải pháp đã có 

2 Hiệu quả (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 4 ô dưới đây)

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả 

3 Khả năng áp dụng (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 3 ô mỗi dòng dưới đây)

- Cung cấp được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối, chính sách: Tốt  Khá  Đạt 

- Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn, dễ thực hiện và

dễ đi vào cuộc sống: Tốt  Khá  Đạt 

- Đã được áp dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả trong phạm vi rộng: Tốt  Khá  Đạt 

-

XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN

(Ký tên và ghi rõ họ tên)

THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ

(Ký tên, ghi rõ họ tên và đóng dấu)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- TITLE ……… 2

- INTRODUCTION ……… 3

- RATIONALE OF THE STUDY………3

- PROCEDURES………7

- FINDINGS ……… 10

- CONCLUSION ……… 16

- APPENDIX 1……… 17

- APPENDIX 2……… 26

- REFERENCES ……… 31

Title

Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary

INTRODUCTION

Listening is one of the four main skills in learning English.

After many years of teaching at Luong The Vinh high school I have found that a lot of

students at this school are afraid of listening periods , seem very tense while listening in

class and almost have no pleasure in listening lessons because listening lessons which

are based on the school curriculum cannot provide them with what they want However,

they very much want to improve their listening skill but they don’t know how to do it As

a teacher, I think that I should do something to help them get pleasure from listening first

and then improve their listening skill For this reason I would like to encourage the

students to practice listening skill through songs in class and at home in order to decrease

tense while listening and enrich their vocabulary.

RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

a What is Listening ?

“Listening” is different from “hearing” as Professor John Drakeford says

Hearing is a word used to describe the physiological sensory processes by which auditory sensations are received by the ears and transmitted to the brain Listening, on the other hand , refers to a more complex psychological procedure involving interpreting and understanding the significance of the sensory experience ( Drakeford , cited in Bolton 1987:32)

Listening skills allow one to make sense of and understand what another person is saying In other words, listening skills allow you to understand what someone is talking about

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“Listening without comprehension means that listening has not taken place successfully.” ( From the Course book : Teaching Listening & Speaking – SEAMEO – p 15 )

b The importance of listening skill

Listening skill plays a very important role and we need good listening skills as Mckay points out that “ Good listening skills make workers more productive The ability to listen carefully will allow you to :

- better understand assignments and what is expected of you

- build rapport with other people

- show support

- work better in a team-based environment

- answer questions ; and

- find underlying meanings in what other say.”

Sarwar quotes a statement by Logan ( 1980 , in Sarwar , 2001 , pp 127-136 ) who says that “ People can learn from a variety of sources , even if the final goals are the same ” Hence , teachers’ role is very crucial in leading students to developing their learning habits inside as well as outside the classroom One of the good learning habits is listening to English songs

c The aim of the innovation :

- To make listening lessons more interesting

- To decrease students’ tense while listening

- To motivate students to practice listening to English songs at home

c Why were songs chosen to teach ?

Lyn Newton points out that “ singing songs and reading poems help expose students

to various types of genres” and he also shows us the benefits of listening to songs:

- Listening to songs is something people do in real life

- The language in songs is authentic / real

- They are interesting ; they motivate learners

- Repetition is not boring if it is in a song

- Rhythm and stress are easy in a song

- New vocabulary is learnt in context

- Listening to songs is a good group activity

- We can all sing alone

What’s more songs not only make students relaxed but also help them improve their

pronunciation , intonation and some grammar points

d How to choose songs

- The songs chosen must contain useful language ( words , vocabulary , idioms ,or

phrases that are usually used in daily life ) or grammar points that students need

to learn

c The participants of the study

45 students of class 12 A 1 of LTV high school were chosen to take part in the

innovation The innovation was carried out in the last 7 minutes of listening periods after

the teacher and the students had already finished listening lessons And the innovation lasted

10 weeks in the first semester ( from 10 October to 3 December,2010

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The reason why the students of class 12A 1 were chosen as the participants of the

study were that :

- They like music

- They usually listen to music in their free time

- They all have a cassette player at home

- They usually listen to Vietnamese songs not English songs

- Some of them listen to English songs but they just listen to the music or tune of the

song not the lyrics

( I once talked to them during speaking class about their free time ,and their attitude to

their listening skill )

The Secondary Innovation

This innovation process could not be conducted without the secondary innovation

which was English songs The researcher wanted to control the participants’ participation

during the research process to see if they were interested in listening to songs , if they

really remembered any songs and if their vocabulary were enriched ( I think students will

remember vocabulary, phrases and sentences much easier, much longer if they listen to

them repeatedly ),so it was the researcher that introduced the English songs to the

research subjects Here is a list of English songs used in the research ( See Appendix )

1 What Are You Doing ?

2 Who’s That Girl ?

8 The Skeleton Dance

9 Don’t Let he Sun Go Down on Me

10 Heal the World

In addition, the students could find English songs on the Internet

PROCEDURES

1 ) Getting Started

a./ A questionnaire which consisted of 6 questions was used in order to find out what

the students thought about listening and what they had done to improve their listening

skill

The questionnaire included both open-ended questions and questions with fixed

alternatives For the questions with fix alternatives the students were asked to indicate

whether they “ strongly agreed ” , “ agreed ” , “ were neutral ” ,

“ disagreed ” or “ strongly disagreed ” with each of the statements For the open-ended

questions the students could freely express their thoughts about the extensive

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reading activity and tasks

The questionnaire revealed that

- 90 % of them thought that listening was the most difficult

- 20 % reported that they often tried to listen to every word

- 80 % of them felt that they were failed listeners when they could not understand the

listening lessons

- 85 % of them felt very tense during listening periods

- 90 % did not listen to English songs very often

- 90 % of them reported that they could hardly learn any new vocabulary from the

listening lessons and if they learned any vocabulary they quickly forgot them

- 95 % hardly knew any of the ten songs that the teacher gave them before the innovation

b./ A pre-test on vocabulary

- A pre- test which consisted of 30 multiple-choice questions on vocabulary was used

The giving of the pre- test to the students aimed at checking their vocabulary before the

innovation After the students had finished the test the researcher asked the students to

hand in all of their tests and did not let them have a chance to look at the test again The

purpose of doing this was that the researcher wanted to use the pre-test again as a

post-test after the students had finished listening the ten songs to check if they learnt anything

from listening to songs

( The vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs were taken from the songs that they were

going to listen to during the innovation.)

2 ) Students and teachers keep track of student progress by using English songs

The listening of the songs could be carried out at the beginning of the listening periods as

warm-up or at the end of the listening periods

Listening tasks

The purpose of giving listening tasks was “ to prompt students to keep listening ” (

From the Course book : Teaching Listening and Speaking – SEAMEO – p 22 ) Hence , it

is advisable to encourage them to report back on their listening in a number of ways

- The teacher let the students listen to the song twice so that they could know the tune

or music of the song

- The teacher asked the students to talk about the song ( e.g What is the song about ?

Which vocabulary can you get from the song ? )

- Then the teacher showed them the lyrics of the song and some new vocabulary of the

 Post -test ( Multiple -choice test on vocabulary )

The same multiple choice test on vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs was given a to the

students again to check if their vocabulary increased or if they gained any vocabulary

after they listened to the songs

( The vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs were taken from the songs that they had

listened to.)

 Questionnaire

A questionnaire was administered to the students at the end of the research The

questionnaire was devised to find out (1 ) the students’ motivation to songs ( 2 ) their

attitude towards listening ( 3 ) their evaluation on listening to songs ( 4 ) and their

comments on listening to songs

The questionnaire included both open-ended questions and questions with fixed

alternatives For the questions with fix alternatives the students were asked to indicate

whether they “ strongly agreed ” , “ agreed ” , “ were neutral ” ,

“ disagreed ” or “ strongly disagreed ” with each of the statements For the open-ended

questions the students could freely express their thoughts about the extensive reading

activity and tasks

FINDINGS

a ) The Pre- test

The number of correct answers The number of students who got the

The table showed that most of the students in class 12 A 1 seemed unfamiliar with some

vocabulary in the ten songs

b ) The post test

The result of the post test :

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The number of correct answers The number of students who got the

The students did better on the post test than on the pre- test This indicated that their

vocabulary was improved due to the listening activity

3.You could learn a lot ( e.g

vocabulary , grammar points

)from listening lessons

1 You thought that listening

2 Listening to songs made you

feel more interested in listening

than before

3.There were a lot of useful

vocabulary in the songs you

listened to

%

4 You listened to English

songs at home more often

%

5 You felt less tense and more

%

6 You started being interested

in listening to the lyrics of

English songs

%

B / Some comments given by the students when doing the questionnaire :

- They could work at their own pace without classroom pressure

- They could listen for pleasure without the pressure of testing or marking

- Listening to songs made it possible for the weak students to participate in the

- activity that they had never had during listening class before

- Songs brought them a lot of interesting vocabulary and they could remember the

vocabulary much more easily and longer

Questionnaire findings revealed that

- The students were engaged in the listening lessons

- The students felt more relaxed while listening to songs

- The students started being interested in English songs

- The students liked singing English songs , so they practiced listening to them more

often

- The relationship between the teacher and the students was better because they

sometimes discussed the content of a song , talked about the singers Once they

invited the teacher to go singing karaoke with them

- They thought that listening activity was useful to them in many aspects : creating

confidence in learning English , encouraging them to become independent listeners ,

and helping them find pleasure and real purposes in listening

- However , they also wished to be provided with authentic listening materials

They wanted to be exposed to more real English world

Summary

Listening to English songs really improved the students’ vocabulary and they

felt motivated to listening Listening tasks did increase the students’

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